Green news & views

Truth or Fiction? Too good to be true?

Whilst oil prices have reached $120 in the last week and the world worries about rising energy prices, along comes a simple technology that can create energy for free. Well, almost.

The EBM technology or Energy By Motion machine, is a 15 ton electro-magnetic generator that, once started, produces electricity under its own perpetual motion.

The current EBM 720 produces about 15Kw of energy from its location in Budapest, Hungary.

Protesters from Greenpeace, some dressed in ape suits, have demonstrated at the premises of Unilever in both London and the North West of England.

Unilever, the global Anglo-Dutch company with interests in food, drink, cleaning products and personal care items, is a major user of palm oil in many of its products. Formed back in 1930 as a merger between the British soap makers, Lever Brothers, and Dutch firm Margarine Unie, the company amalgamated to pool its resources as both products (soap & margarine) relied heavily in the use of palm oil.

It's been on facebook, and now Google have turned the lights out. It's Earth Hour, tonight 8pm-9pm GMT or whatever time that equates to in your part of the world.

All you have to do is turn off the lights and "see the difference you can make".

It's got to be better than E-Day which was an abysmal failure.

The BBC's speculatively-titled story "Chancellor looks to green budget" is pretty thread-bare, starting with the opening line:

Green taxes and measures to help people struggling to pay energy bills are likely to be among changes in the chancellor's first Budget on Wednesday.

It goes on to speculate that the chancellor, Alistair Darling, might put a levy on larger vehicles like people carriers, putting their price up by £2000.

And that's it!

If you're in the south of England then don't forget it's Green Architecture Day in Brighton.

Starting at 10am and running through to 5pm there are stalls and stands, which are free to see.

The talks, ranging from the design of eco centres and buildings to green rooves, need to be paid for. Obviously it's too late to pre-book but you can pay at the door today.

Oil prices hit an all-time high this morning as US light crude was up to $102.80 a barrel in East Asian trading. Yesterday oil was $102.59 a barrel, but today's peak figure beats the record high of $102.53 for a barrel of oil back in April 1980.

The shaky state of the US economy has weakened the dollar and the weak dollar makes oil a cheaper for investors in other currencies.

Now if oil prices aren't a good reason to go green then I really don't know what it will take to make people snap out of their excessive ways!

Remember it was E-Day yesterday? Well, E-Day was actually a 24 hour period from Wednesday into Thursday.

The whole point of E-Day was to reduce demand for energy by switching off unneeded devices, turning things off standby mode (mobile phone chargers, electric toothbrushes, PCs, TVs, Sky digiboxes, etc) and make an impact on energy use in this country just for one day!

And what happened? Well, E-Day seems to have been an unmitigated... DISASTER!

After the little town of Modbury in Devon banned carrier bags last year, it has taken a long time for anyone else in England to catch up.

In fact nobody has caught up yet, there are just schemes to deter shoppers from using the dreaded polluting plastic bags, of which a staggering 13 billion are given away free every year across the country. Taking around 1000 years to decay, it's no wonder something needs to be done about the "white trash".

WRAP, the Waste and Recycling Action Programme, has withdrawn its scheme to help Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (Small businesses to you and me) do their recycling.

In a shock move, just four months after the scheme was launched, WRAP pulled the plug on their "Funding Support Scheme for Recycling Services to Business".

The scheme was introduced in October last year to give UK small businesses a boost in going green by supporting the groups that offer recycling services to small business.

Just to remind you folks that it's E-Day today...

From 6pm make sure you turn off those lights you're not using, turn off the TV when it's not being watched, don't leave those devices on standby (PCs and printers) and let's see if we can use a little less energy, aye?

Or are we preaching to the converted?